A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4)

by Granger, Ann

  ‘Well, more or less,’ I agreed. I could see why the chase after Mas, witnessed by so many bystanders, would become folklore immediately. At each retelling, Mas’s exploits would grow and become more fantastic until he turned into the Springheeled Jack of legend.

  ‘But I am still very pleased to see you, because I want to talk to you, Joey. You like horses, don’t you?’

  ‘Yus . . .’ agreed Joey cautiously.

  ‘I know a cabman by the name of Wally Slater. He’s a very nice man, Joey. He used to be a prizefighter so he looks rather frightening, but really, he’s very kind. He needs someone to help him look after his horse, and clean his cab – it’s a growler – when he gets home at the end of the day. So, I told him about you and he’s agreed to give you a trial. I don’t suppose he’ll pay very much, but it would be a regular wage and far better than just living on the streets.’

  Joey’s expression had gone through surprise to incredulity to alarm to something like panic. ‘Yes, an’ very likely knock the living daylights out of me if I don’t do it properly, if his horse don’t kick my head in first!’

  ‘Mr Slater would not do that, Joey. He’d know I would find out about it and he wouldn’t want to upset me.’ I was reasonably sure of this. I wasn’t certain Wally Slater was worried about upsetting me so much, as he’d be worried I’d lecture him. ‘You can’t stay on the streets, doing nothing for the rest of your life, Joey.’

  ‘I don’t go thinking about the rest of me life,’ objected Joey. ‘That’s a waste of time, that is. I might not have one.’

  ‘What? A life?’

  ‘No one knows it,’ said Joey, in a surprising recourse to philosophy. ‘I might get the cholera. I might get murdered meself, like that old feller, Tapley. I might . . .’ he added, squinting up at me ferociously, ‘get run down by a cab!’

  ‘Yes, you might,’ I agreed. ‘And if you go on living on the streets as you do, it’s more than likely. Why don’t you let me take you along to meet Wally Slater? It’s worth a try.’

  ‘All right . . .’ agreed Joey unwillingly. ‘But if he starts hitting me or his ’orse starts biting me, I’ll be off!’

  ‘Good! Agreed, then. Nelson is a very placid horse and I’m sure he doesn’t bite. Now then, we’d better clean you up a bit.’

  ‘Clean me up . . .’ Now there was no disguising Joey’s horror. ‘Whatcha mean?’

  ‘Well, I can’t take you to Wally without a wash and some proper clothes . . .’

  ‘WASH! ’

  If I hadn’t grabbed him, he’d have been off down the street and this time, I doubt he would have come back. He wriggled but I clung on. He could have got free if he could have given rein to his normal tactics of biting and kicking, but he didn’t feel free to kick me or bite me, so in the end he gave up and stood glowering at me resentfully.

  ‘I’d never have agreed to it, if I’d known it meant all this . . .’ he grumbled as I hauled him along to our house. ‘It’s just like being arrested, it is!’

  I must say Bessie looked just as horrified when she saw him. ‘Wash him?’ she yelled.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand. Get the tin tub down, out in the yard, and put on some kettles for hot water.’

  ‘I’ll drown . . .’ said Joey despondently.

  ‘Not in a tin tub, Joey, with Bessie and me standing by.’

  ‘I ain’t taking all me clothes off in front of no women.’

  ‘All right, I’ll give you the soap and a towel; and Bessie and I will wait in the kitchen.’

  He looked pathetic. ‘I’ll get a chill on me chest. I’ll cough me lungs up. Lungs carry you off in no time, lungs do.’

  ‘Not if you’re quick about it. Come on, now. And don’t forget to wash your hair.’

  We filled the tub, handed Joey a bar of soap and the towel, made him promise not to run off, and told him to get on with it. He sniffed at the soap and said he’d smell like a ladybird.

  We retired to the kitchen. Bessie, peeping from the window, reported that Joey had climbed into the tub, and was amusing himself by flicking water at a neighbour’s cat.

  ‘At least some dirt will come off,’ I told her. ‘Here’s some money. Run along to the old man who keeps the barrow of second-hand clothing, down by the bridge. Get some trousers and a shirt, a jacket if you can. I don’t know about boots, what size.’

  ‘I’ll get them plenty big enough. We can stuff them with paper if we need to,’ said Bessie.

  When she returned, Joey, wrapped in his towel, was sitting damply before the kitchen range with a mug of tea in hand. The range was smoking rather badly because I had stuffed his old clothes into it to burn, but smoke didn’t worry Joey. I had trimmed his hair and, although I’m no barber, it was at least tidy. Joey had allowed me to do it without much protest. I think he had resigned himself to the inevitable. Dressed in his new (old) clothes, he looked transformed from his former self. He wasn’t sure about the boots, never having worn any. He walked up and down the kitchen in a comical fashion, raising each foot too high and placing it carefully on the stone floor.

  ‘You’ll get used to them,’ we promised him.

  Now that we were all ready, I thought it well to be on our way at once to Kentish Town where I knew the Slaters lived. Joey’s willingness was already fading. I think the boots in particular had something to do with that.

  ‘It don’t seem normal,’ he muttered, as we set out. ‘That’s what feet are for, walking on.’

  ‘In boots,’ I pointed out, ‘you are safe from sharp stones or bruises from having someone stand on your foot. Your feet are dry in wet weather and warm in cold weather.’

  ‘They slows you up!’ argued Joey. ‘You can’t run in these things. If I had to run, I’d have to take ’em off first, and while I was doing that, I’d be caught!’

  ‘Stop making a fuss!’ Bessie ordered him. ‘You’d make a fuss to be hung, you would!’

  We took an omnibus for the third time in our recent adventures and set off for Kentish Town. I think Joey liked the omnibus ride, but did not wish us to think he had no experience of this vehicle.

  ‘It ain’t the first time I took the ommybus, you know,’ he informed us. ‘Only the first time I’ve been sitting inside one.’

  ‘You’ve travelled on the open top before?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I hung on the back and rode for free.’

  I knew Kentish Town to be a place with some history behind it. It had not begun to grow from its original village until comparatively recent years. Now there were new buildings of all sorts, and a railway line running through it, but plenty of older houses remained. We were directed to one of these in a side street. Wally was well known, as I’d guessed he would be, and our first enquiry told us the way.

  Wally’s home was still a cottage with an entrance beside it, wide enough to admit his cab, and leading into a yard. At the back of the yard was a wooden building, Nelson’s stable. Family washing flapped on a line.

  The door was opened to us by a small, plump woman who barely stood as high as my shoulder; she had a great deal of fluffy fair hair pinned up on top of her head in a bun, so that she resembled a cottage loaf.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said, by way of greeting, looking the three of us up and down. ‘What’s all this, then?’

  ‘Mrs Slater?’ I asked. ‘I am—’

  I got no further before I was interrupted. ‘Oh, I know who you are, I do!’ said Mrs Slater merrily. ‘You’re that Miss Martin as my husband is always talking of!’

  ‘Yes, well, I am Mrs Ross now.’

  ‘He told me that, and all. Married to a policeman, he said. He reckoned that would suit you. Come on in, then.’

  We trooped into her spotless parlour where I introduced Bessie and finally, Joey. I then explained our purpose. ‘I did speak to your husband about Joey, perhaps he mentioned him? I do hope so.’

  ‘He told me all about it, never you fear. But tea first, business after,’ said Mrs Slater firmly. ‘You sit there, Mrs Ross, that’s
the best chair. You, Miss Bessie, you sit over there on that one. It rocks a bit but it won’t tip you on the floor. I keep on to Wally to fix the legs. And you, young feller-me-lad, you come into the kitchen with me. You can carry things.’

  Bessie, delighted at being treated as a proper visitor, was beaming as she took her seat on the wobbly chair. I sat in a vast wing chair that was obviously normally reserved for Wally. A table and cupboard were the only other articles of furniture in the room, and a well-worn scrap of carpet on the stone flags, but everything was spotlessly clean. Mrs Slater, I was sure she was responsible, had compensated for lack of furnishing by adorning the walls with all manner of pictures. Most, I suspected, had been bought from a street barrow for a few pence. There was one, in pride of place, of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in her coronation robes. Another, beside it, featured the Prince Consort, looking very much the dandy in his younger years. Sadly, this picture was crowned with a black ribbon bow, in recognition of his death a few years earlier. There were images of the royal children, two or three paintings of flowers, a representation of the Parting of the Red Sea, and several images of prizefighters. The largest of these was displayed above the hearth and showed a fearsome figure, bare chested and in breeches, whose feet appeared remarkably small for the rest of him to balance on. He crouched, holding out his clenched fists and fixing us with a menacing scowl.

  ‘That’s my Wally,’ said Mrs Slater with cheerful pride, returning from the kitchen to find me studying this one. ‘In his prime, as you might say. That’s when I first knew him. But I told him straight away, once I saw he was sweet on me, I’m not being married to no prizefighter. They’ve always got a black eye, or a thick ear and coming home covered in blood. So make your choice, I told him, and he did.’ This last was said with deep satisfaction. ‘His family was in the licensed hackney carriage trade,’ she went on. ‘Father and grandfather before him, so Wally turned to that.

  ‘Now then,’ continued Mrs Slater, turning to a miserable-looking Joey who stood behind her, shuffling in his new boots, and carrying the tray of tea things. ‘You can put that on the table, over there.’

  Joey obeyed, but not without remarking loudly, ‘I come here to look after a horse. I never come to be no footman!’

  ‘No backchat!’ ordered Mrs Slater sternly. ‘Now then, Mrs Ross, I’ve had a look at this young feller and a bit of talk to him in my kitchen. We will give him a try, a shilling a week to begin with. He can sleep in the stable loft and I’ll feed him, is that all right?’

  ‘That would be excellent,’ I spoke up for Joey. ‘Thank Mrs Slater, Joey.’

  ‘Much obliged, I’m sure,’ mumbled Joey.

  ‘No taking of strong drink, no using of foul language, no blaspheming and no hanging out in bad company,’ ordered Mrs Slater. ‘No going in the pubs. No gambling. You keep the horse groomed, the cab fit for a gentleman or lady to ride in, and you keep yourself clean. You can wash out in the yard under the pump.’

  Joey rolled his eyes at me in despair.

  ‘Certainly,’ I agreed. ‘You understand all that, Joey?’

  ‘Yus, I understand all right,’ said Joey.

  ‘Mutton stew for dinner tonight,’ said Mrs Slater in a careless sort of way, with the suspicion of a twinkle in her eye. ‘That all right, too?’

  ‘Oh, yus! That’s all right!’ exclaimed Joey, brightening.

  ‘It will work out splendidly,’ I would tell Ben much later.

  ‘If he doesn’t run off,’ warned Ben.

  ‘He won’t run away from a hot dinner every night and shelter in bad weather,’ I said firmly. ‘Besides, if he did, I fancy the Slaters would have every cabbie in London looking out for him.’

  But I had to wait a little before I could recount my success, because Ben had other, more important, matters on his hands.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  * * *

  Inspector Benjamin Ross

  I HAD found Sergeant Morris drinking a mug of tea in a shadowy nook between a cupboard and a wall. This hideaway was sacred to Morris and known throughout the Yard, at least among the constables, as ‘the sergeant’s earth’. The query, ‘Where is Morris?’ might, if you were lucky, be answered, ‘He’s gone to earth, sir.’ Then, if you knew the code, you knew exactly where to find him.

  Morris made to put down the mug and stand up as I approached. I waved him to take his seat again and sat down beside him. If anyone deserved a mug of tea on the quiet, it was Morris. Besides, he wasn’t going to get much chance of a few minutes’ relaxation for the next two days.

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ I said to him. ‘We have forty-eight hours to save my reputation or ruin it.’

  ‘How’s that, then, sir?’ he asked, eyeing me over the rim of his mug.

  I explained. Morris drained his tea and sat with the mug nestled in the palms of his hands, staring thoughtfully ahead of him. ‘It’ll take a bit of doing, Mr Ross.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to get started. What I want you to do is find out which case Jonathan Tapley was appearing in on the day of the murder. Find out what time court rose, and if his actions can be accounted for thereafter.’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said Morris, ‘but he’d be a bit of an idiot to say he was in court, if he wasn’t appearing that day.’

  ‘I don’t suggest he didn’t appear at any time that day in court. I am particularly anxious to know the latest time he was seen there. If I am right – that is to say if Mrs Jameson is right – and Tapley was walking up and down outside her house shortly after three in the afternoon . . . We must allow the lady’s estimate of “shortly after” to be any time up to half past. But if he was there, then it follows he wasn’t in court. To turn the argument around, if he wasn’t in court, he could have been walking outside the house.’

  ‘Very well, sir. Where will I find you? Should I need to, that is.’

  ‘I am going to seek out Dr Harper. Then I’ll meet you back here.’

  We went about our separate ways.

  By one of those quirks of detection – which generally take you in directions you don’t anticipate – I found myself going back to Wapping. Enquiry at the hospital where he was normally to be found told me Dr Harper had been called to the River Police morgue there, on account of a drowning.

  Accordingly, I found myself in the somewhat ramshackle structure that dignified itself by the name of morgue and was used for the reception of bodies pulled from the Thames. Its latest arrival, a young woman, lay on the table awaiting the attention of Harper, who was standing by, scalpel in hand, with an assistant at his elbow.

  ‘Ah, Dr Harper!’ I hailed him. ‘I am sorry to disturb you, but glad to see you haven’t started yet.’ That was true. ‘Could I have a word?’

  ‘If it doesn’t take long,’ replied Harper. He indicated the woman on the table. ‘This will turn out a suicide, of course. Well nourished. Clothes good quality and nothing darned or mended.’ He indicated the pile of sodden clothing on a nearby bench. ‘Hands . . .’ He lifted one of the drowned girl’s hands and turned it palm upward for my inspection. ‘Never done a day’s work in her life.’ He stared thoughtfully at the subject. ‘It will be the old, old story, I dare say, seduced and abandoned. She is with child, of course.’ He replaced the girl’s hand on the table surprisingly gently.

  We moved away from the table and the assistant tactfully went out of the room.

  ‘Dr Harper,’ I began. ‘You will recall the night I fetched you away from your dinner to a murder in a house not far from Waterloo Station, in the same street in which I live myself, as it happens.’

  ‘I do,’ said Harper, eyeing me suspiciously. ‘You’ll not be wanting me to carry out a second post-mortem examination? I have a very busy day ahead of me. I have to go straight from this one to another case elsewhere, in which the victim supposedly shot himself. But it wouldn’t be the first time a dead man has shot himself, eh?’

  ‘No, Doctor. The body I called you to that night . . .’

  ‘Oh that,
’ said Harper. ‘Cause of death was clear.’

  ‘We buried the victim yesterday, or rather his family did. I don’t anticipate applying for an exhumation order. We are agreed on cause of death.’

  ‘Good,’ said Harper. ‘Once they’ve been in the ground a while, it all gets more difficult.’ He frowned. ‘Something else bothers you?’

  ‘Yes. I wonder if you would cast your mind back to that evening. Do you remember anything about the room in which the body was found?’ I waited apprehensively for his reply.

  ‘Small sitting room of some sort, or gentleman’s study, perhaps?’ Harper offered. Seeing this vague memory was not enough, he asked, ‘What is it you have in mind?’

  ‘Nothing else about the room, Doctor? Anything . . .’ I urged. I must not lead him, but if his recollection was no more than that, I was done for.

  Harper was scowling in effort. ‘Well, it was simply furnished . . . couple of chairs, a bookcase . . . no fire in the grate.’ He caught the expression on my face. ‘Oh, so that’s what you’re getting at? The room was very cold. I did notice that.’

  ‘It was very cold. Apparently he could have had a fire lit, had he wanted it. But since midwinter he’d done without. He said it didn’t trouble him. I have this from the landlady and the maidservant. Dr Harper, I have read, or been told, that if a newly slain body is kept very cold, the onset of rigor may be delayed?’

  ‘So it is time of death that troubles you, not cause?’ Harper indicated the door. ‘Let us go outside, Ross. I fancy a pipe of tobacco.’

  We went outside the building and stood in the sharp breeze blowing across the water. Gulls wheeled above and uttered their discordant cries. Out on the river, a vessel sounded a warning whistle blast. Harper took his time filling and tamping down his pipe. Then he had to get the thing going and only then, when it was drawing satisfactorily, did he take it from his mouth and, holding it by the bowl, point the stem at me.